Azu's Akatsuki Tale, Ch 19: The Sealing
by KorinaK
Summary: AGH... It took me SO LONG to write this... Anyway, Azumi is in for a lot of trouble when Sasori and Deidara try to undertake something big.


Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto or any of its characters… etc, etc. If I did, then the Akatsuki would be more of a big player in the story!

Okay. Long. LOng. LONg. LONG. CHAPTER. (Yeah, I know I overuse that comment, but still….) I'm warning you… but I think it's one of the best I have so far. But it's not funny or anything… It's more on the serious side.

Thank you to all those emo-ish songs, their creators, and their posters on for providing me with music to get in the mood. Enjoy.

Azu's Akatsuki Tale, Chapter 19: The Sealing

The second time it happened, it took me by surprise. I had no idea…

I was in the kitchen, making a bowl of instant noodles. Unless I eat out, I live on instant things. Yeah, I'm obviously not one of those people who are gifted culinary-wise.

Hidan sneaked up on me so fast that I didn't even have time to register his familiar chakra. I just remember feeling his freakishly cold hands on my neck, his wintry breath chilling the back of my neck. "Gotcha…!"

A sudden wave of pure white washed over me like a tsunami's waves, pushing my consciousness under its surface.

When I came to again, I was holding Hidan by his neck against the wall. Only a second passed as I registered this… An instant later, he threw me off him. I hit an opposite counter hard, wincing at the sound of my body smacking against it.

"What the fucking hell's wrong with you, you little bitch???" Massaging his neck, he spat a few more words in another language that sounded positively unfriendly. "Do you always over-react like this…?"

All I could think was: Hidan was –is- much stronger than I am. Also, he's a good fighter. How could I have done that to him?

He stalked off angrily. I hadn't done any serious damage to him… At least. Holding my head in my hands, I felt a migraine coming on.

Hidan was right. What the hell was wrong with me?

The third time, I felt it coming a mile away. But I couldn't even do anything to stop it.

I should have known. Since Sasori was missing, Deidara was training with me. We were practicing kendo-style, albeit without the protective body armor. I'd already been hit by him three times.

Usually, my stubbornness would not allow me to quit until he called a break. But today, I was so tired from the headache and all the thoughts spinning through my head that I actually slipped and almost fell. Deidara disarmed me in an instant, my wooden sword landing with a loud "clack" somewhere far in the cold stone chamber.

Deidara stopped instantly. "Azumi-san, is there something wrong…hm?"

"I don't think so…sorry…" I muttered under my breath.

He tossed my sword at me. "One more time, yeah. If you can't concentrate this time, we'll stop, hm."

I wearily took up the "on-guard" position, the movements of the sword –normally so instinctive to me- feeling clumsy. My attention wavered for a moment, and I saw Deidara go for a blow that would either disarm me or "kill" me.

I practically _saw_ a creeping white mist come crawling in to my vision from the sides. I tried to drop my guard, for I was sure if I stopped fighting that this would stop. But "something" else already had hold on my body. The whiteness overtook my mind in less than twenty seconds.

It was almost like I didn't want to see what the situation would be when my control resurfaced. I opened my eyes, all too slowly.

Deidara had apparently been knocked to the ground. Because he was curled up, I didn't see the worst of it at first. But soon I notice his hands, stained red and clutching his stomach. His eyes were closed, his face distorted with pain. A slow stream of thick blood ran down the side of his face, seeming startlingly bright against his pale skin.

"No…. NO. Deidara-san!" I dropped the sword I'd been carrying, noticed his –thrown quite some distance away.

I noticed that I'd gripped the sword so hard that my fingernails had carved holes in to its surface.

I gently pried his bloody fingers off of his stomach, and winced to hear his quick gasp of pain. "Let me see tha-…" My sentence trailed off.

There was a deep, deep wound running the length of his chest. The part where the damage was worst was his stomach: It looked like somebody had shredded his body in to pieces there. He opened his clouded blue eyes for an instant and looked at me. And I saw the worst possible thing there: Fear of me.

Then his eyes fluttered shut, and his body fell limp and bloody against mine. Letting out a breath, I realized he had lost consciousness. I was almost thankful for the fact that he didn't have to feel whatever pain he had. I wanted to scream my defiance against this thing that was taking over me, to deny what was happening.

But I couldn't pretend Deidara's blood wasn't literally on my hands, that it wasn't his shallow, uneven, breathing echoing off of the walls.

I couldn't even take care of him myself. I found Zetsu instead.

That night, I sat in bed refusing to cry. It seems you cry when you're sad, or lonely, but it's really just when you're frustrated. I was frustrated and furious at myself.

And the thought came through clearer than ever: I needed to find that sword more than ever. For no reason other than an overwhelming instinct, I knew that that strange sword would help me stop this. Until then, I'd never trust myself around the Akatsuki. Or anybody else, for that matter…

But how could I find the sword? I'd looked in as many places as I could think of. I'd remembered the feel of it in my hand and tried calling to it with my chakra. Nothing worked.

I fell asleep with heavy thoughts of the events that had happened in the last few days swirling through my head. Perhaps that's what caused me, normally a deep sleeper, to have such clear dreams.

In the dream, I was running through a red mist towards a source of immense power I knew to be the sword. I was in an enormous maze. A strange sound filled the air, almost like the way I'd imagine a slow, bubbling lava flow would sound.

But soon a monster started to follow me. I couldn't tell you what it looked like or even if I saw it. I just know its presence was distinctive as a bright neon light in darkness. But even though I knew it would kill me if it reached me, I didn't feel any panic.

Running completely effortlessly, I ran in to Tobi. In the dream, the mask he was wearing was blue. I tried to tell him to run, for I knew the monster behind me would kill him. But someone clamped his hand around my mouth and held me back.

The monster hit Tobi hard. His mask fell off, and strangely, he had no face. I knew he was dead, but there was no blood. The monster looked at me and its face turned in to Itachi's, smirking slightly at me. It must have been a younger version of him, for he lacked the red Sharingan eyes and long lines on his face that he had now. The hair was also cut slightly differently: It wasn't long.

Tobi's body disappeared, and I continued on through the maze calmly with that monster loping along behind me. Soon, I got to the end of the maze. There was an enormous statue of some kind, billowing up in to the darkness. There was somebody lying on the floor in the middle.

It was Sasori. I only had time to register the sword piercing through his chest before Hidan melted in to view in front of me. He was bleeding like crazy from an enormous neck wound. He grabbed my wrists, hard enough to hurt. "Wake up, Azu. Wake up…. wake up….."

I jerked awake with a gasp. There was someone in the pitch blackness of my room, actually holding my wrists. Letting out a muffled curse, I tried to shake the person off, and then stopped. Though I didn't feel any mind-invading whiteness, I didn't care to test the limits.

"Azu-san, it's just me, yeah." Deidara's voice was a low, husky whisper. "Come with me..."

"Deidara?" I whispered back. "You're already okay?"

"Yeah…I'm okay now, Zetsu-san patched me up good, yeah."

"I am _so sorry…_" I whispered. "It's just that lately-"

"Hush, hm. We can talk about it later, yeah?" He grabbed my hand. "Come on, hm."

I crept out of my room with him, mind still fuzzy with sleep. I still hadn't entirely processed that we were sneaking out of my room sometime in the middle of the night. The cold air pressed against my legs, and I felt grateful for the dark silk pajamas I'd bought recently.

I'm not sure how long we walked, but soon we arrived at a cave. It was slightly damp with condensation. As the door closed behind us, everything turned pitch black.

From slightly to the left of me came Deidara's voice. "Sasori-danna, it's me... I've brought Azu-san, yeah."

"What…?" I was confused now. "Sasori-san, why are we here?"

A match flared in the blackness. Sasori's face seemed to hover in midair for a second, like a ghosts. "Azu-san. Let me explain."

I sat down, not about to interrupt him.

"I've had suspicions for some time now that something was up... I saw Deidara after you attacked him today. He was completely shredded up… and I know normally, Azu, you wouldn't have strength enough to do something like that."

I nodded. "I don't know what's wrong with me." Frustrated, I refused to let my pent-up tears slip down my cheeks. "I don't even know what 'it' is or why I'm doing it…"

"I have a theory. I think there's some kind of… power that's in you that is unstable, or improperly sealed. But, the thing is… I have no idea what it is."

"Um, so what are we sitting here for…?" I asked slowly.

Sasori stood up unhurriedly. "Deidara and I are going to take a little look at what's causing all this."

I noticed the strong chakra detecting barriers and other wards and traps around the area we were in. "Why all the secrecy…?" I asked suspiciously.

"This isn't something the Akatsuki would approve of. We're acting outside the rules right now, all three of us."

"Why no-"

"Quiet." Brooking no argument, he walked around the cave lighting various dry wood torches that stood around.

As the cave slowly lit up, I saw what Sasori had written on the floor. It was an enormous diagram, the lines written with tiny, tiny characters in what looked like black ink. Apparently he'd plotted it out with the help of Deidara, because tiny clay spiders crouched on the floor marked out the circular diagram in even parts. Now that I noticed it, the whole thing looked like an enormous spider web of intricate plan and design.

"Sit in the middle here." I sat nervously in the middle of the diagram, words and symbols stretching out in all directions from me. Sasori, with no hesitation whatsoever, whipped out a brush pen and demanded, "Take off your shirt."

I stared. "What?"

Sasori sighed. "Just do it."

I reluctantly unbuttoned the shirt I was wearing and slowly slid it off. The next moment, I felt Sasori's cool fingers on my skin, writing quickly and smoothly with the pen. The ink slid slickly on to my skin.

"Uh…" I was getting more and more uneasy. "Are you sure this'll work properly?"

"Of course. We're just going to take a look at what's sealed up in you. We are not going to disturb the original seal or block or whatever it is you have in you."

"Th-… that's not it. Will it hurt…?" I whispered.

His dark red eyes gleamed in the flickering light as he glanced towards me. "It might," he said coldly. "I've never done this before."

I nodded slightly, feeling queasy.

"Hey, you nervous, yeah?" Deidara had been kneeling on the floor finishing some part of the figure on the ground. "Don't worry about it, hm. You do want to stop this violence, don't you?"

Deidara wouldn't look directly in my eyes when he spoke. He was still nervous… I could understand why. Suddenly with conviction, I said, "Yeah, I do want to find out what's wrong."

"Done," declared Sasori. "Let's go." He pushed me unsympathetically down so I was lying on the floor.

They took what I assumed were pre-assigned positions on either side of the drawing on the floor. Turning my head slightly, I was rewarded with a harsh, "Don't move."

Too late I felt the metal cords snaking around my wrists. I tried to struggle against them. Sending my chakra in to it, I felt Deidara's and Sasori's combined chakra strongly in the cords. It burned like a thickly woven rope of fire, causing me to jerk back. The cords wound around my ankles and waist and neck, their cold greasiness sliding across my bare skin like wet snakes. "Wha…What are you doing…?" My voice sounded panicky to my own ears.

Sasori unapologetically said, "It's safer for us this way…"

I lay back uncomfortably, feeling the restriction all too keenly. Just barely, I could see the black ink characters Sasori had written stretching down my stomach and across my legs.

"Don't move." Sasori's command echoed through the room. "Deidara, let's go."

Their chakra washed around me, coolly penetrating my body. At first, I felt a somewhat nauseating sensation in my stomach. Then a growing warmth in my whole body was starting, slowly and then faster until I felt my skin was in a blaze and I'd melt the rock underneath me. Strangely, it was a pleasurable sensation. Barely, I could feel the faint chakra of Sasori and Deidara working around me. I felt safe and calm, at least until a few seconds later…

I felt the barrier blow apart with the force of a hundred thousand enormous glass sheets shattering outwards all at once in my body. It made the sound of a gargantuan waterfall's slam on time-worn stones. A hurricane's blast worth of energy slammed through my body in a millisecond of ultimate power. My skin glowed a blinding blankness, and for just a moment my whole body was a strange translucent white. I heard a scream, felt my entire self slam against the metal cords on top of me, heard a loud metallic crack as they almost gave way. Energy surged out of my body, streaming out of my pores like a thousand gallons of water at a time pushing through pinholes. Faintly I felt the blood coating my broken wrists, knew dimly that something had gone wrong. And the voice I heard screaming was my own.

Let me tell you now: The pain was impossible. It felt like something ripping your entire body part and then melding it together with hot irons, again and again, every millisecond. About ten thousand times worse than that.

From what seemed like thousands of miles away, I heard a muffled curse. Suddenly, against the sensation of being in Hell (albeit a living one), I felt an icy coldness like ants of frost crawling up my skin.

Amazingly, my mind was still functioning, though barely. The pain should have knocked me out… I wanted it to. I remember thinking: _Somebody kill me now…_

The entire diagram that Sasori had drawn on the floor was peeling upwards, ink floating like black butterflies in the air and swirling in the air. I felt the seals he'd drawn crawling up my skin and then shredding off forcibly as they were thrown off by whatever had been unleashed….

I remember looking up and thinking: _Strangely, it's a beautiful effect…_

And after_ that _iswhen I blacked out.

Itachi's point of view

It was ridiculous to think that I would overlook activites as big as those going on in Akatsuki that night. Really, I expected more caution from –well, maybe not that blonde-haired kid, but at least from Sasori. Any way I thought about it, I didn't really care anyways.

But apparently they'd been messing with something way bigger than either of them had thought to prepare for. I felt Deidara lose consciousness first, then Sasori. And the resulting chakra left raging was enough to rival the Kyuubi's… it was more than any I'd felt before. And considering that Kisame was my partner…

Another sealed beast? I hurried for the vicinity that the energy was coming from.

Right when I touched the first chakra barrier, the immense chakra inside… dispersed, somehow. I broke through the remaining barriers hurriedly, uncharacteristically curious as to what had happened.

Sasori and Deidara had both been thrown to opposite sides of the room. Deidara's hair was covering his face, but I could see the pooling blood on the floor underneath him. Stupid child… his wound hadn't even healed properly yet.

The puppet master was lying on his side, looking as if he'd fallen asleep. Every single freckle on his pale face stood out. I could feel almost no chakra emanating from him. If I hadn't been an as good ninja as I am, I would have thought he was dead. I could see the shredded remnants of the protective seal they'd attempted with my Sharingan, blown to pieces.

Movement caught my eye. Someone was stumbling along the wall…

"Azumi-san?"

She turned to me, tripped on something, and fell face flat on to the floor. I was at her side in an instant. Azumi looked at me…

"Why does everything hurt…" she whispered scratchily. "What…? I can't see…. my eyes burn and…" Her voice faded off in to a bloody hacking cough as she twisted on the ground, holding her stomach. "AAAAAAGH…. IT HURTS….."

It was nothing a healer could ever fix. The damage was physically enough to kill her. The entire right side of her face was a bloody, gory mess. Her left eye was horribly bloodshot, veins pulsing and pushing blood through her eye so it looked red like my Sharingan. From what I could see of them, her wrists were broken. And strangely, her entire body was covered with millions of cuts ranging from the side of a papercut to a huge bloody scar running down her whole back from shoulder to the back of her right knee. Azumi's whole body was tensed…. I don't have any idea what the pain must have felt like.

In a moment, she lay on the ground, sweating hard and seemingly out of strength. Her body was trembling and shaking extremely badly, and when I placed a hand on her forehead, I realized she had a very high fever.

"Do something… please…"

I never thought I'd see her cry. The tears ran like silver down her face, soaking my cloak. "ITACHI…. _PLEASE…_It's coming again…"

Azumi's sob of pain was fragile. She fell against me. Her body was shuddering so hard that I almost lost grip of her sweat-slicked hand as I grabbed it. "Azumi-san… do you hear me? You are not going to die…AZUMI-SAN, do you hear me?"

She didn't answer, but gripped my hand so hard that her nails left bloody holes in it. Kneeling over with the pain, her pupils shrank to tiny points as she screamed.

Even my Mangekyou couldn't produce results like this. Even in her weakness, I could tell Azu had gained indescribable strength. I couldn't handle her safely if something unexpected happened. Rapidly, I pulled out a needle I knew to be coated with my strongest sleep serum, enough to knock out at least a hundred ninja all at once. I sank it deep in to her neck.

Slowly, her eyes expanded back to normal size. "Itachi…. thank y-" Her voice dropped off. I caught her before she hit the ground.

When I felt her forehead again, I realized that her body was burning itself to death trying to rid itself of some foreign invader in it. I could hear her heart's extremely rapid, light beating. Azu was still tensed, even in unconsciousness, as her body fought.

Strange. That immensely powerful chakra I'd felt… where had it gone?

Clearing all the blood off her stomach from the thousands of cuts on it, I saw the enormous black seal that had formed from it. The more I looked at it, the more it seemed like a seal for one of the Tailed Beasts.

But my instinct told me it wasn't a Bijuu…. it couldn't be. Otherwise I'd know it… for Akatsuki knows everything about all the Bijuu.

However, I had no time to waste contemplating this. It'd been a while since I'd done any serious healing work… I hoped I hadn't gotten too out of practice. After all, Azumi's life now depended on me. Rolling up my sleeves swiftly, I got to work.


End file.
